What kind of person writes hundreds — actual hundreds, not rhetorical hundreds — of letters to the editor of a weekly newspaper, arguing, cajoling, making salty remarks, pointing out the foolishness of public policies and the occasional embarrassments of politicians?
A wonderful citizen, that’s who.
Faithful readers of The Star will be surprised and saddened to learn of the death of our most faithful longtime correspondent, Neil Hausig, a real estate agent who came to East Hampton Village from Paris in 1979 and who contributed countless letters to these pages. He died on Saturday of cancer.
Due to a blip in The Star’s digital archive in the 1990s, we cannot pinpoint the exact issue date at which Mr. Hausig began to contribute his near-weekly letters, but we can find regular correspondence dating back to 1997. In March of that year, for example, he sent in a lengthy letter of 883 words in which he commented in colorful language on what he saw as the absurdities of the so-called War on Drugs. His last letter to the editor, much shorter, was published on June 20 and remarked on the greed and nihilism of the white ruling class; characteristically for someone with his broad cultural frame of reference, he managed in this brief final letter to allude to a lyric from a Talking Heads song called “Heaven.”
Mr. Hausig’s voice was woven into the public discourse of our community over the last 30 years, as he commented on the issues of the day in epistolary prose that was pointed, clear, always bracingly intelligent, usually argumentative, and often amusing. Even those who might disagree with his left-of-center point of view would have to admit Mr. Hausig was a well-informed man who took the civic duty of an American citizen to heart. Whether we realize it or not, his opinions have helped shape Star readers’ thoughts on issues large and small, national and local.
As an intensive newspaper reader who relied on print media as an information source, and who had the courage to speak out to his community in print (in full and fully informed sentences, yet), Mr. Hausig may well be among the last of his breed. But we hope not.
Repose en paix, Neil. We will remember you.